


Keeping Dead Flowers

by narath



Series: solavellan moments [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, To Be Continued
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:00:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narath/pseuds/narath
Summary: a start of something new
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Lavellan & Solas, solavellan - Relationship
Series: solavellan moments [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617556
Kudos: 2
Collections: Dragon Age Den (NSFW)





	Keeping Dead Flowers

Delicate snowflakes danced through the air of the Skyhold garden, a stark contrast from the vines and flowers that still bloomed, untouched by the coming frost. No snowflake touched the ground and lasted, but the one that landed on her cold lips.

It was two weeks after the detrimental fall of Corypheus; he disappeared, that was a given, but his presence was felt in every inch of Thedas’ existence. Perhaps a blight was coming; that was the talk given freely to every passerby, with a hushed tone and raised eyebrow. But more than that rested at the tip of every common folks mind; nothing was what it was supposed to be. The victory, downplayed as it was, left a bitter taste on their tongue. Within the timber walls of their homes everyone talked about the second coming of the Titans, or of lyrium; they spoke quietly of the ruin of the world; of legend and their ties to truth.

No one spoke of it publicly, especially now, when Gaspards forces inhabited their lands, set up posts as easily as one puts their feet upon a stool after a hard day. For whatever it was worth, people trusted The Herald, and her hand in the quick demise of the physical entity Corypheus wore; laden with red lyrium but broken as a mortal. It was a quick -and some would say easy- win for sure, but still one that left the lingering doubt with the women and children, and husbands, too; whatever that was, it couldn’t just be ended that soon.

Sansara thought about it a lot, especially when the day had reached an exhausted end and she was left alone on the roof of the rookery with the stars and a bottle of brandy as company. She knew that Solas’s departure was a part of it, as well the disappearance of elves across the continent. It was naive to think otherwise, but it was still a thought without any evidence to tie it to.

He visited her before the first fortnight passed, a mourning wolf seen only as a shadow in the fog caused by her imaginary morning dew, and she understood every pitch of the wailing howl the creature let her hear. After that, she barely slept. It was only a matter of time.

Today she stood in the garden as the sun shyly peeked over the mountains that surrounded Skyhold; filled with colorful vines of Arbors blessing and the pungent, earthy smell of elfroot overcoming even the characteristic stinging sensation of frost.

Sansara always knew her time to leave the Inquisition was inevitable; as winds started singing that winter was here to stay, and all refugees now had been housed and fed, that time had come. She had her cloak, and packed a bedroll lined with soft velveteen for the night she would have to spend outside of the crossroads before Abelas was due to come and guide her. Two red apples were stuffed in each pocket besides the meat in her pack, because she knew she couldn’t live through any precarious moment without a sweet to fall back to. Still in disbelief of her choice to leave unannounced, she tugged the glove off her right hand with her teeth. The sun had yet to rise, no one was awake. Her fingertips red, stiff and angering still for the cold so hastily imposed, she dragged them reverently against the tree where Solas had carved her name, before she tightened her straps and leapt off the side of Skyholds walls.

She slept at the first impromptu campsite without any dreams wandering too close to him; but still she remembered.

“They will think it’s a heartstruck soldier, no one-” he’d chuckle on that warm summers eve, blowing away the shaved bark from the trunk of the tree. “But you, and I, will know.”

It was a gentle thing, Solas’s love. He was passionate; like the time he licked the slit in her open palm and fucked her with his eyes, growling with his pool of mana as it invaded hers. But the more insistent - and addictive - drawl of his ar lath ma in the morning; that’s where it really lay. He would lazily shut his eyes when she said it back - perhaps to ignore it as hard as he could, or to savour it for an eternity to come. She really didn’t know what to do with it, as they had yet to touch; merge, physically; but their bond was strong enough to find each other in the fade without even having the intent to.

The second night, he was close. Sansa huddled in the pelts he once fashioned for her, not because of cold, but as if she needed more proof that it was going to be okay. As long as she stuck with her initial version of truth that this -whatever the Heralds purpose once was- just boiled down to the aftermath of the Inquisition: a battle for the humans of Thedas to overcome. Everything she knew, or had learned to know, was swiftly cast to the back of her mind.

Herald, no more.

She was never used to the title to begin with, or had any intention to reconcile with it during the uprising of the Inquisition; instead it was an annoyance that she was happy to dust off her dalish shoulders. And so she slept, reaching for him. She lit a beacon in the far reaches of the fade, with a practically detonated mind blast,and a powerful waft of crystal grace; clearing all ill intent, and calling for him as he often called upon her. 

“It’s like I’m tied to you,” Sansara said, between the here and now; she walked a tall wheat field of Redcliffe’s farms, her hands brushing against the clusters of grain at the top, catching ladybugs.

“I don’t really know what to make of it, Solas. You have to tell me. Please tell me something-” she hesitated, her childish urgency still two steps ahead of her before a very needed deep breath. She held her hand up to study the beetle that ran across the back of her hand.

“Or anything more than nothing, please.”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Sansara.” Her name lilted off Solas’s tongue like poetry, walking up behind her; all of his ragged royalty keeping his spine straight. “But I assure you, you will know soon enough.”

“But the one you have to keep, a mistress of lies is still what you seek?” 

Solas laughed, bumped his shoulders with hers to acknowledge her horrible poetry.

“So it seems,” he winked.

Solas clasped his hands behind his back, and urged the fade to will more ladybugs onto the tall strains. At least that he could do, for now.

“How are your preparations going?”

“Well enough.” Sansa said. “The only one that suspects me leaving is Varric. And Dagna. Perhaps the Iron Bull, too.”

Tears gathered in her eyes, unwillingly, and she forced them away with a stuttered laughter, a mask made to fool no-one she already knew.

Solas stopped a few paces after her broken sob, turned towards her. “It is not simple, ma vhenan, and your sacrifice isn’t taken lightly.”

“A sacrifice beyond my right, Solas. I ended up in the… the position I’m in today because of you, no?” A sluggish smile spread across her lips.

“Why do you accost that to me?”

“I’m emotional, but not foolish,” she said, opening her palm for her anchor to hoarsely sing it’s dying tune. “It became apparent first in the fade, during the siege of Adamant.” She giggled; “When you told the fear to shut up. It called you trickster, didn’t it?”

“You never told me you were well versed in elvhen?”

“Besides the point, hahren.” Sansa said, taking his hand from behind his back, to holding hers. “I’d give you credit for how you deceived us, me, but we are well beyond that. Don’t you think?” She kept it light as a breeze caressing a shore; but she couldn’t hide the gentle sag of her shoulders as she finally let her superstition go, and let the truth she had come to know settle in her bones.

Dread wolf or not, he was still the man she loved; and she knew him as a reasonable one. She could count the times he stood fast in his belief; but she couldn’t with those she had persuaded him to invite some of the shimmering alacrity she had come to see the the world around her.

There was more to him than what the legend cultivated.

They had reached the uneven seams of the fields they had wandered now, for tonight, and a solemn sigh escaped Solas mouth before he spoke.

Sansara stopped well before him, picking the stray ladybugs from the mess of her hair and held them closed up in her palm. Solas looked at her, his body half-turned, studying her features as if it was his salvation.

“It is almost sunrise,” he said and offered her the glint of his eye as he smiled towards her. “I’ll see you soon.”

Sansara chuckled, a bubbling of thoughts rising through her abdomen, her throat; “And so I was thinking I would never see you again.”

“Vhenan” was all Solas mustered as he eliminated the space between them, finding the proof of him making the right choice in the bristled tips of her curls, in the soft trail of her lower lip. The fade closed in on them, like a theaters closing curtains.

“One more night.” He said, and left a tingling kiss on the bridge of her nose.

“One more night,” she agreed, and woke up in the same instant, the sun’s yellow light filtering through the sparse branches of her path yet to take.

One more night, she assured herself as she set off, chewing on an apple, towards the eluvian that would take her a day to reach, and yet another night after she stepped through; but it was all a minor inconvenience compared to what wouldn’t have happened if she never took the leap.

The snow broke crisp under her light and hurried feet and the forest swayed a bit with the wind. She reached the clearing where she was to meet Abelas within the eight hours she first estimated it would take to reach him, just as sun set. He was regal and still clad in the same armor as when she first saw him at the temple; but lacking the green vallaslin that once used to hug his facial features.

“Sansara.” He said, and smiled gently.

She approached him with tired steps after walking for so long, still beamed as he handed her a flask of hot, sweet tea. She sipped once, twice, timidly and wary, before she shook the doubts from her mind and brushed some snow off her hair.

“Shall we?” Abelas turned towards the thrumming eluvian behind him, gesturing for her to follow. “It will still be a day for us to reach the library, but it is well in itself. I have lots to inform you about.”

Sansara shrugged. “Did you bring any brandy?”

“I did,” Abelas chuckled, walking ahead with legs twice as long as hers.

“Then I’m all ears.”


End file.
